Hillaryland was the self-designated name of a group of core advisors to Hillary Clinton, when she was First Lady of the United States and again when, as United States Senator, she was one of the Democratic Party candidates for president in the 2008 U.S. election.
The group included Huma Abedin, Patti Solis Doyle (credited with coining the name "Hillaryland"), [1] Mandy Grunwald, Neel Lattimore, Ann Lewis, Evelyn Lieberman, Tamera Luzzatto, Capricia Marshall, Cheryl Mills, Minyon Moore, Lissa Muscatine, Neera Tanden, Melanne Verveer, Lisa Caputo, Ann Stock [2] and Maggie Williams. [3] In her autobiography, Living History , Clinton credits campaign aide Steve Rabinowitz with first using the term. [4]
Almost all are women; the only man in the group was former First Lady deputy press secretary Neel Lattimore. Most worked in the Clinton Administration, and have been personal friends and confidants of Hillary Clinton since at least then, if not earlier. The name Hillaryland dates back to the Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, when it was the portion of his Little Rock, Arkansas "war room" that housed Hillary Clinton's staff. [5] Later it became better known as the moniker for the area of the West Wing of the White House in which the First Lady's staff had their offices; according to Clinton, Hillaryland had its own subculture, based on camaraderie, never leaking information to the press, and having plenty of toys and cookies around for the children of staffers – as Hillary put it, "While the West Wing had a tendency to leak... Hillaryland never did, and every child who ever visited knew exactly where we stashed the cookies." [5] Clinton biographers Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, Jr. described Hillaryland as "an important subculture during the Clinton presidency." [6]
The advisers were also present during Clinton's tenure as U.S. Senator. [6] But the role of Hillaryland came under considerable discussion during and after Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign that she conducted while senator. [7] [8] Michelle Cottle of New York magazine described its role as "less a campaign entity than an extended sisterhood defined by its devotion to its namesake. Even so, the group's protective ethos dominates her presidential campaign, where loyalty is demanded, self-promotion frowned upon, and talking out of school, especially to the press, [is strongly discouraged]." [7] As campaign chroniclers John Heilemann and Mark Halperin later wrote, "the people comprising it ... were loyal to a fault, smart and ruthless, hard-headed and hardboiled. ... They referred to themselves collectively as Hillaryland, and everyone else in politics did too." [9] By this point the definition of Hillaryland was often expanded a bit to include campaign insiders such as chief strategist Mark Penn. [9]
After she ended up losing the 2008 Democratic nomination, critics often focused on the limited and isolated circle of advisers and dysfunctional management style as one of the reasons behind the campaign's failure. [8] [10] One criticism was that she valued personal loyalty over the ability to do the job. [8] The level of protection and the consequent inability to criticize failed tactics—and the public perception that Clinton needed that much protection—alarmed critics in 2015 as well, [11] prior to her loss in the general election the following year.
At the beginning of Clinton's 2009–13 tenure as U.S. Secretary of State, she brought over some of the Hillaryland personnel to staff the State Department, but she also hired other people as well. [8]
Dorothy Emma Rodham was an American homemaker and the mother of former First Lady, U.S. Senator, United States Secretary of State, and 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician and diplomat who served as the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a U.S. senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, and as the first lady of the United States to the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party's nominee in the 2016 presidential election, becoming the first woman to win a presidential nomination by a major U.S. political party and the first woman to win the popular vote for U.S. president. She is to date the only First Lady of the United States to have run for elected office.
The 2008 presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton, then junior United States senator from New York, was announced on her website on January 20, 2007. Hillary Clinton was previously the First Lady of the United States and First Lady of Arkansas prior to her election as U.S. Senator from New York. She is also the wife of former President Bill Clinton. Clinton was the source of much media speculation since having expressed interest in being a candidate in the 2008 presidential election since at least October 2002.
Evelyn May Lieberman was an American public affairs professional who, during the Clinton administration, became the first woman to serve as White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and was the first United States Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
Jeff Gerth is an American former investigative reporter for The New York Times who has written lengthy, probing stories that drew both praise and criticism. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for covering the transfer of American satellite-launch technology to China. He broke stories about the Whitewater controversy and the Chinese scientist Wen Ho Lee.
Madeleine Grunwald is an American professional political consultant and media advisor for the Democratic Party. Grunwald is one of the few women at the top of the field, having helped elect numerous senators and governors, and is the only woman in history to run the advertising for a successful presidential campaign.
In 1969, Hillary Rodham wrote a 92-page senior thesis for Wellesley College about the views advocated by community organizer Saul Alinsky, titled "There Is Only the Fight . . . ": An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.
Huma Mahmood Abedin is an American political staffer who was vice chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for President of the United States. Before that, Abedin was deputy chief of staff to Clinton when she was U.S. Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. She was also the traveling chief of staff and former assistant to Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election.
The United States Senate career of Hillary Rodham Clinton began when she defeated Republican Rick Lazio in the 2000 United States Senate election in New York. She was elected to a second term in 2006. Clinton resigned from the Senate on January 21, 2009, to become United States Secretary of State for the Obama Administration.
Philippe I. Reines is an American political consultant. He joined the Department of State as a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton when she became United States Secretary of State in January 2009, and was promoted to deputy assistant secretary of state for strategic communications in 2010.
Patti Solis Doyle is an American political operative and was in 2008 a senior adviser to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, where she was the campaign chief of staff to Joe Biden, Obama's vice presidential choice.
Susan P. Thomases is a New York-based attorney. She served as personal counsel and an informal adviser to Hillary Clinton during the presidency of Bill Clinton. She was a prominent witness during the Senate Whitewater Hearings in 1995. She served as the model for the character Lucille Kaufmann from the 1996 political novel Primary Colors.
A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton is a biography of Hillary Clinton, written by Carl Bernstein and published on June 5, 2007 by Alfred A. Knopf.
Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime is a book by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2008 United States presidential election. Released on January 11, 2010, it was also published in the United Kingdom under the title Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House. The book is based on interviews with more than 300 people involved in the campaign. It discusses factors including Democratic Party presidential candidate John Edwards' extramarital affair, the relationship between Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his vice presidential running mate Joe Biden, the failure of Republican Party candidate Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign and Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy.
Neera Tanden is an American political consultant and government official serving as director of the United States Domestic Policy Council since 2023. Tanden previously served as a senior advisor and staff secretary to President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2023 and as president of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a center-left policy research and advocacy organization, where she worked in different capacities since its founding in 2003 until she joined the Biden administration in 2021.
The cultural and political image of Hillary Clinton has been explored since the early 1990s, when her husband Bill Clinton launched his presidential campaign, and has continued to draw broad public attention during her time as First Lady of the United States, U.S. Senator from New York, 67th United States Secretary of State, and the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election.
Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton is an investigative biography about United States Senator, and former First Lady of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton that was written by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. and published on June 8, 2007, by Little, Brown and Company.
Following her graduation from Yale Law School in 1973 until becoming first lady of the United States in 1993, Hillary Clinton practiced law. In 1988 and 1991 The National Law Journal named Clinton one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States.
Hillary Clinton served as the first lady of the United States from 1993 until 2001, during the presidency of her husband Bill Clinton.
Hillary Clinton served as first lady of Arkansas during the two governorships of her husband, Bill Clinton. During her husband's first governorship, she was known as Hillary Rodham. However, in his second governorship, she made use of the name Hillary Rodham Clinton.
